Grow up: Your 20s actually do matter
People in their 20s are getting the wrong message from our culture, says psychologist Meg Jay, author of The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter — and How to Make the Most of Them Now. Jay, an assistant clinical professor at the University of Virgin
Q: Why do people think the 20s don’t matter?
A: We hear messages that the slower path to adulthood is definitely better. It has led to this idea that if you wait and get started at 30, you make better decisions, have better marriages, have better careers. It’s left the 20s in a bit of a “Las Vegas in the life cycle,” where what you do isn’t real and choices don’t count, because what really counts are our 30s. I very much disagree.
Q: Some call the 20s “extended adolescence” or “emerging adulthood.” Has our culture done a disservice to young people today?
A: You don’t empower twentysomethings by telling them they’re not grown-ups. You don’t demote them just when they need to start taking themselves seriously. They interpret it as “I shouldn’t worry about a real relationship. I don’t have to engage with having a real job. Everybody tells me I’m not a grown-up.” They need to learn how to be more future-oriented. If you ever want to change something about yourself, your 20s are your best shot.
Q: Why do you say “weak ties” may change our lives?
A: The twentysomethings do tend to be in constant communication with the same few people. I recommend they get out there and work some weak ties. Go out with people you don’t usually go out with. Accept invitations you normally turn down. Make some new friends. Some favor that somebody did for you probably did more for your career than your best friend ever did.
Q: You say we pick our families, not just our friends. What do you mean?
A: I work with clients who a lot of times are feeling sad or bad or mad about the families they grew up with. This is a real paradigm shift for a lot of twentysomethings, to shift from this idea that family is something you’re stuck with. It’s absolutely something you’re going to create. For the next 40 years, it is going to be about your spouse and your kids and not about your mom and your dad.
Q: You talk about the concept of “dating down.” Can you explain what you mean and why it’s harmful?
A: That’s a twentysomething sort of expression — dating below where you ought to be. I think of it as having low-criteria or nocriteria relationships. I think twentysomethings think their relationships don’t matter — that if they just want to have a good time with someone really good-looking or convenient, why not?
Q: Another concern you express is about fertility. Why do you bring this up?
A: The 20s is when you really start to think, “What is the life I want for myself in 10 or 15 or 20 years, and what do I need to start doing now so I get that?” You’ll hear thirty- and fortysomethings say, “I left myself eight years to date and have fun and party, but I only left four or five years to pull off having a family.”
Q: Times change. Isn’t a lot of what’s happening out of the twentysomething’s control?
A: I am not in any way telling clients I think you should get married sooner or have your kids at 24. Your life will not come to fruition in your 20s the way it did 40 years ago, where by the end of your 20s, you knew where you were going to live and who your spouse was and maybe you had all your kids. That’s over for a reason. It’s not as easy to put the pieces together as it used to be, so this idea that you can pull a rabbit out of the hat in your 30s is crazy. It’s not going to just happen because you turn 30.